Quote of the Month

In the 1975 book by Maurice Pope on the history of decipherment (of Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform and Linear B) there is a quote by the esteemed Professor Hyde, from 1700:

Travellers' graffiti ... a monument of ill writing and inexpert sculpture ... late, insignificant and scarcely worth the trouble of solving.

This was his assessment of the great Achaemenid tombs of Naqsh-e Rustam, which he visited. They date back as far as 1000BC. Having stood beneath these tombs once myself, I can testify that only a fool would think them insignificant to the age of decipherment. With three parallel texts, the tombs were a key element in the eventual decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform, and this in turn led to an understanding of other, far more ancient forms of writing, back to the evolution of writing from symbols and accounting systems in the dawn of history.

Anyone can be wrong.